Diligent Recruitment of Families for Children in the Foster Care System

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THIS FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT HAS BEEN MODIFIED. PLEASE SEE THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR DETAILS This Funding Opportunity Announcement solicits applications to fund cooperative agreements, for the purpose of developing programs to recruit resource families for children in foster care. Applications submitted in response to this announcement should propose projects that will: 1. Implement comprehensive, multi-faceted diligent recruitment programs for resource families, including kinship, foster, concurrent, and adoptive families for children and youth served by public child welfare agencies; effectively identify, engage and support resource families as a means of improving permanency outcomes and building lasting connections for children in foster care. 2. Integrate the diligent recruitment programs into the Child and Family Service Plan and with other agency programs, including foster care case planning and permanency planning processes, to facilitate active concurrent planning activities; 3. Demonstrate the capacity to use this project as a transformative platform for improved system response to permanency and building connections, incorporating changes at the policy and practice level and embracing the philosophy of permanency beginning at entry into the child welfare system; 4. Evaluate the implementation of the comprehensive diligent recruitment programs to document processes and potential linkages between diligent recruitment strategies and improved outcomes; and; 5. Develop identifiable sites that other States/locales seeking to implement improved diligent recruitment methods can look at for guidance, insight and possible replication.

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